Health MDGs reports

A Progress report on the Global Campaign for the Health MDGs was made preparing for the then upcoming UN High-level event on the Millennium Development Goals in New York 1 - 2 April. The report summarized the various initiatives included in the Global Campaign, their status and milestones for 2008.

The report showed how the initiatives were unfolding rapidly, building up a global movement committed to achieving the health MDGs, and finding new ways of supporting countries in obtaining results.

That day, a group of World Leaders committed to actions aimed at saving 10 million mothers and newborns in the poorest countries by 2015.

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg of Norway launched the first year Progress Report on the Global Campaign for Health. The Report demonstrated that increased investments in health - a doubling of health aid since 2000 - are having results. More than 2 million people were receiving AIDS treatment, the rapid scale-up of effective malaria programmes were leading to dramatic reductions in child mortality and measles deaths had fallen by 68% since 1999.

But the Report also called for urgent, effective international action to accelerate progress towards the UN goals of reducing maternal and child deaths by 2015. To save 3m mothers and 7m newborns - and meet these goals - an extra $2.4bn in 2009 rising to $7bn in 2015 would be needed.

2009 was a key year for the world's poorest. The global economic crisis had so far driven more than 50 million people into extreme poverty, particularly women and children. Lessons from previous crisis had shown that setbacks for the poorest take a long time to put right, so the need for action was urgent.

The 2009 report of the Global Campaign of the Health MDGs, Leading by Example - Protecting the most vulnerable during the economic crisis that was unveiled at a luncheon at the UN 15 June 2009, hosted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Foreign Minister of Norway Jonas Gahr Støre, showed the way forward.

Putting the Global Strategy for Womens and Childrens Health into action: At no other time in recent history has there been so much excitement about, and attention paid to, women’s and children’s health issues.

There was a great political momentum, and the US$40 billion of funding recently committed  to the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, launched by the UN Secretary-General in September 2010, is unprecedented.